subscribe
Apple | Spotify | Amazon |iHeart Radio | cast box | Podcast Republic | RSS | Patreon | fluoride | Facebook | IMDB
podcast transcript
Today, they are worn on basketball courts, fashion runways, city streets, and in almost every home on Earth.
But from its humble beginnings as a simple rubber-soled shoe, the humble sneaker has evolved into a global cultural force worth billions of dollars.
They didn’t just revolutionize shoes. In the process, he transformed sports, reshaped music and fashion, and revitalized marketing empires.
In this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily, learn more about the history of sneakers and how they became so much more than just a shoe.
Whether you call them sneakers, sneakers, tennis shoes, running shoes, kicks, sneakers, sports shoes, or street shoes, everyone wears sneakers. They have become a global phenomenon.
In the last episode, we looked at the history of shoes around the world. The state of footwear before the development of sneakers was somewhat limited.
Most people wore ‘straight’ shoes that had no distinction between left and right sides. Almost all early shoes had leather uppers, varying heel heights, and leather or wooden soles, making them unsuitable for anything other than walking. But these limitations set the stage for later innovations.
The upper classes adopted cobbler innovations, while the lower classes wore handmade clothing or plain leather wraps.
The man whose innovation set us on the path to sneakers was a name you may be familiar with: Charles Goodyear. Although he did not invent rubber, which is found naturally in rubber plants, he did invent a process called vulcanization in the 1830s that made rubber durable, resilient, and practical for shoes.
The rubber allows people to move quietly and “sneak up” to others while avoiding the clicking sound of leather and wooden soles, hence the name “sneakers.”
The biggest impact of this innovation was the surprising changes it could give to sneakers. Flexible rubber soles now allow designers to create shoes for a variety of purposes.
The upper class in Victorian England enjoyed leisure activities such as croquet, cricket, and lawn tennis. All these games are played on well-maintained lawns. Stepping on the croquet court while wearing wooden or hard leather heeled shoes can damage the surface. The advent of rubber and the invention of sneakers solved this problem.
At first, the earliest sneakers were what you’d expect. They had understated plain canvas or leather uppers with limited soles.
Designs changed with the tennis craze of the late 19th century, which led to further innovation in sneakers. Tennis shoes should be built for cutting, agility, and quick changes of direction. The stronger soles make the shoes smoother and more athletic.
Despite its early development in England, the sneaker revolution began with a rubber shoe company in Chicago called Converse.
In 1917, the company began selling a rubber-soled shoe called the All-Star, one of the first mass-produced basketball shoes. In the 1920s, basketball player and salesman Chuck Taylor helped promote and refine the design, and his signature was added in 1932.
The shoe he designed has become one of the most iconic sneakers of all time. The Converse All Star features a thick vulcanized rubber sole, canvas upper, and a patch emblazoned with Chuck Taylor’s name and a bold star.
The All-Star’s debut revolutionized exercise equipment. The shoe remained the standard for more than 40 years and dominated basketball with a 90% market share by 1967.
While Converse was leading the way across the Atlantic in the United States, Adi and Rudi Dassler were revolutionizing sneakers at their Herzogenaurach, Germany-based company Geda, writing another pivotal chapter in sneaker history.
After the war, the brothers tried to disassociate themselves from the Nazis by publicly accusing each other of closer ties to the Nazi Party. This acrimonious split eventually brought their professional alliance to a permanent end.
In 1948, Adi founded Adidas and Rudi founded Ruda, which later became Puma.
Their animosity was so severe that after forming separate companies, Adi and Rudi Dassler never spoke to each other again, and the town even buried them on opposite sides of the cemetery.
The competition was so fierce that the town of Herzogenaurach was divided. It became known as the ‘Bent Neck Village’ because residents looked at their sneakers to determine whether it was safe to talk to them.
Nonetheless, even after their split, the two brothers continued to focus on sneaker innovation, ushering in the modern era of sneakers. They made special shoes for sprinting, running, and soccer.
Perhaps their greatest innovation was their use of athletes to market their products. They leveraged their relationships with legendary sports stars to market and brand their shoes.
Their first iconic ambassador was Jesse Owens in 1936. To ensure Owen’s commitment, Adi showed up at the Olympic village carrying a custom shoe box. He wanted Owens to wear those shoes.
It was a huge success. Owens won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics, including a then-world record time of 10.3 seconds in the 100 meters, wearing Adi Dassler’s homemade sprint spikes.
Adi Dassler created the blueprint for modern sneaker marketing. This innovation shifted footwear away from durability and affordability to a new focus on athletic expertise.
Dassler recognized that Owens’ Olympic shoes would not stand out or be identified without the logo, so he created the iconic three-stripe logo, which became the logo for Adidas.
The inclusion of logos on shoes sparked a revolution in aspirational marketing. People who bought Dassler shoes in the 1930s and 1940s weren’t going to run like Jesse Owens, but they still felt like they were wearing the same shoes as a champion, which could improve their performance.
After the Dassler brothers split into Adidas and Puma, the industry competed for endorsements from elite athletes to demonstrate the power of this new marketing strategy. A prominent example of this competition was legendary Brazilian soccer star Pele.
In 1970, Puma and Adidas were thought to have agreed not to pursue the Brazilian superstar for fear that a bidding war would be impossible for both companies.
Puma secretly canceled the contract. They negotiated with Pele and paid him to wear Puma boots at the World Cup. Just before the start of Brazil’s opening match, in one of his most famous marketing moments, Pele asked the referee for time to tie his shoelaces and had television cameras zoom in on his Puma.
The Puma company paid $120,000 to put Pele in football boots, one of the greatest marketing moments in sports history.
By the time Pele was lacing up his shoes, another change was taking place in basketball with the emergence of the American Basketball Association.
As covered in a previous episode, entrepreneurs started the ABA to compete with the NBA and hope to be acquired by the NBA. The NBA was traditional with a strict dress code, but the ABA broke the norm.
Dr. The ABA, with stars like Julius Erving, also known as J, has made the shoe one of the attractions of the league. Monochrome Converse shoes have been replaced by colorful leather high-tops with vibrant, logos.
The message was clear. Dr. If you can’t dunk like J, you can dress like him. The leather shoes popularized by the ABA sparked a fashion movement among urban African Americans that eventually spread around the world.
The marketing revolution surrounding sneakers continued with the emergence of a new shoe company out of Beaverton, Oregon.
Nike began as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964, founded by Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman to import Japanese sneakers. In 1971, the company changed its name to Nike, after the Greek goddess of victory, and introduced the Swoosh logo.
Nike’s early shoes were soccer shoes and track cleats. Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight’s former track and field coach at the University of Oregon, found key inspiration in his wife’s waffle iron.
In Nike’s own corporate history, “Looking at his wife Barbara’s waffle iron, which the Bowermans received as a wedding gift in 1936, Bill was struck by the plaid. The raised square seemed like the correct geometry to provide the lightweight traction he was looking for.”
Bill broke down that waffle iron, made a rubber sole prototype, and ended up buying a few more. The result was the Nike Moon Shoe, which played a leading role in the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Although the Moonshoe was not available to non-Olympic athletes, sales exploded when a standard version of the Waffle Trainer was released. In just 10 years, the Waffle Trainer boosted Nike’s sales to more than $250 million. This is an impressive achievement for a waffle iron.
But Nike’s greatest achievement was yet to come.
In 1984, the company signed rookie basketball star Michael Jordan to a five-year, $2.5 million contract. That was a huge amount of money for a player who had yet to play an NBA game. This was probably the greatest moment in marketing history.
Nike hoped to sell $3 million in the first three years of “Air Jordan” products. They sold $70 million.
Michael Jordan’s shoes have produced 38 signature models since their debut in 1985. Air Jordan has annual sales of over $6 billion in footwear alone, and even more in apparel sales.
Michael Jordan is estimated to have earned more than $2 billion during his 40-year association with Nike.
The success of Michael Jordan’s relationship with Nike goes beyond money. Michael Jordan has become a global cultural phenomenon. The Jordan Jumpman logo is one of the most powerful brands in the world.
The demand for Air Jordans was so great that it sparked a wave of violence as people chased the latest shoe. The ‘Sneaker Murder’ was a national scourge that killed around 100 children by the late 1980s.
Michael Jordan wasn’t the only sneaker to emerge as a cultural icon. In 1986, the rap group RUN DMC released the song “My Adidas”, which earned them a $1 million endorsement deal with Adidas.
This was notable because it was the first time non-athletes had endorsed and promoted a shoe. During a concert at Madison Square Garden, an Adidas executive was invited to the show, which saw DMC stop the show and ask everyone to hold up one of their Adidas shoes.
The executive was overwhelmed by the sight of 40,000 concertgoers holding Adidas Superstars. The message to Adidas was clear. The truth is that a brand means much more than a company realizes.
Adidas has moved on from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s baseball shoes to become part of the burgeoning hip-hop culture. The Superstar model’s unique rubber toe design made it the perfect choice for the emerging breakdance culture of the 1980s.
Although the 1980s were the golden age of sneakers, their popularity and cultural significance have only grown since then.
In the 21st century, sneakerheads have continued the sneaker revolution through their extensive collections and financially supported an industry expected to reach $200 billion a year by the end of 2010.
These collectors often buy sneakers and never wear them at all. They keep them in a box and treat them almost like an investment. Sneaker companies took advantage of this phenomenon by releasing shoes in limited quantities and charging extremely high prices to capitalize on demand.
While a typical pair of sneakers retails for around $250, some limited edition Air Jordans sell for nearly $500. Even more exclusive collaborations involving famous designers or celebrities have been known to cost as much as $25,000.
The highest price ever paid for a pair of sneakers was $2.2 million for the Nike sneakers worn by Michael Jordan in the 1998 NBA Finals.
Despite rumors to the contrary, there are currently no plans for an Air Jordan Everything Everywhere line. But a podcast-worn pair of my Keds might end up up for auction someday.
What started as a simple rubber-soled shoe designed for comfort and sport became something much bigger than anyone could have imagined. Sneakers have transformed athletics, shaped music and fashion, created billion-dollar brands, and helped turn ordinary shoes into objects of identity, status, and obsession.
Few everyday objects reveal so much about technology, culture, and commerce. From dusty gym floors to playgrounds and concert halls, the history of sneakers shows that sometimes the most influential inventions are right under our feet.
